A touching, freshly told story enriched by a vibrant cultural backdrop.
In Goldsmith’s debut, a historical coming-of-age story, the rapidly evolving identity of earnest and precocious 14-year-old Winona Daggett compellingly plays against the backdrop of racial tension between white and Native American societies in 1970s Montana.
Winona is part of a patched-together, less than perfect family: her wise older sister, Jess, her pushover mother, Marie, her alcoholic stepfather, Randy, and her two young stepsiblings. The family runs on equal parts tenderness and cruelty, so early on, Winona had to develop her own moral code. She calls on this integrity to stand up to school administrators trying to keep white and Indian students segregated, and to follow her heart and heady desire into the arms of Bell, a chiseled high school basketball player who happens to be a Lakota Indian. When Winona first meets him at a high school dance, “We stood, swaying very slightly, as if a wind were blowing two ways at once against both our backs, pushing us toward each other.” The screw is turned when long-buried family secrets come to light and Winona moves from bystander to player in the personal and political matters of her time. Goldsmith gently keeps the reader aligned with her sensitive heroine’s consciousness, delivering the kind of intimate, affecting language worthy of both the tragic and beautiful elements that come with an end of innocence. After she loses her virginity, for example, Winona gains a new understanding of her mother and stepfather’s intimacy when she hears him say her name: “I heard tones—desire and hope, seduction and fear—I wouldn’t have picked up four days before, as if my range of hearing now stretched into the supersonic, like a bat’s….Energy poised on the brink of force, two magnets quivering between attraction and repulsion.”
A touching, freshly told story enriched by a vibrant cultural backdrop.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9849536-7-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Full Court Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A quietly powerful story, at times harrowing but ultimately a joy to read.
In this novel, life turns toward a dark horizon for a precocious adolescent grieving for her father in 1941 Tennessee.
It’s difficult to harbor secrets in a rural mountain town of maybe 80 souls, especially when adult siblings live within spitting distance of the family home. Most of the townsmen work at the sawmill, and most of the young women have been harassed at one time or another by creepy Johnny Monroe. But Louisa May McAllister, nicknamed Wildflower, knows that revealing her frequent forays to the cemetery, where she talks to her beloved late father, would only rile her embittered mother. She also knows to hide her “secret sense,” as it would evoke scorn from all save eccentric Aunt Sadie, who shares her tomboy niece’s gift. Those secrets come at a cost when, on one of her graveyard visits, Louisa May ignores her premonition of danger. The consequences—somewhat expected yet still horrific—are buffered by the visions into which the 13-year-old escapes. Sharp-witted, strong, curious and distrustful of any authority figure not living up to her standards—including God—Louisa May immerses us in her world with astute observations and wonderfully turned phrases, with nary a cliché to be found. She could be an adolescent Scout Finch, had Scout’s father died unexpectedly and her life taken a bad turn. Though her story is full of pathos and loss, her sorrow is genuine and refreshingly free of self-pity. She accepts that she and her mother are “like vinegar and soda, always reacting,” that her best friend has grown distant, and that despite the preacher’s condemnation, a young suicide victim should be sent “to the head of heaven’s line.” Her connection to the land—a presence as vividly portrayed as any character—makes her compassionate but tough; she’s as willing to see trees as angels as she is to join her brothers-in-law in seeking revenge. By necessity, Louisa May grows up quickly, but by her secret sense, she also understands forgiveness.
A quietly powerful story, at times harrowing but ultimately a joy to read.Pub Date: April 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0983588238
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Wild Lily Arts
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The latest in Sathy’s (Attack of the Chicken Nugget Man: A California CST Adventure, 2009, etc.) series of test prep titles disguises educational tips in a funny middle-grade reader.
Chris Robb’s day is off to an inauspicious start when he accidentally wears his sister’s pink socks to school, and only goes downhill from there. Chris isn’t the best of students and his inability to focus and remember the most basic things—like his teacher’s absurd name, Ms. Bubblebrain—gets him into constant trouble. Between Chris and his colorful cast of classmates, Ms. Bubblebrain can hardly keep order. Scenarios, such as the entire class falling down like a row of dominoes when a panicked Chris runs right into his teacher, are illustrated in a high quality black-and-white cartoon style. The funny, well-illustrated story will likely appeal to struggling readers and is certainly much more entertaining than typical test prep materials. Sample standardized test questions with fill-in circles appear at the end of each chapter to acclimate students to test-taking. Some questions are too easy, but others require students to dig deep. Each question has one overly goofy answer, which might prove a bit too tempting for some students: For the question, “What is the antonym (opposite) of yell?” choice D reads, “I don't know, but this one time, I yelled so loud that my tongue flew out of my mouth and got stuck to the wall in my classroom.” The book is designed to be used either as a read-alone or as a read aloud book by teachers or parents. For this reason, an appendix includes lists of additional activities as well as the core standards, referenced throughout the book by way of superscript notations. The notations might prove distracting to some readers, but are set off in a non-bold font that most readers should be able to ignore. The fill-in style questions, however, make it less than ideal for library use. This fun book uses elements of humorous novels and cartoons to emphasize core elementary standards in a way that will likely appeal to both teachers and students.
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0982172940
Page Count: 162
Publisher: Student Solutions, Inc.
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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